Day four - payoff

Courtesy of

Science in the kitchen - sounds intriguing

In the morning I drove from San Francisco to St Helena. It took me 1 hour 40 minutes to get there, the good thing was that class started at 9 a.m. today and not at 7.

Today is the first day of our learning. We have only one lecture for today regarding science in the kitchen. The lecture was quite interesting and many points were new for me. For example
the science behind emulsified sauce (mayonnaise for example) and why it can broke. Also we were told about different sources of heat and how it works.

Some points were quite logical and easy, but I've never though about them. For example heat always transfers from hot item to cold one and never other way. This can explain why we can cook medium rare steak (transfer heat from hot surface to the surface of steak and from the surface of the steak to the cold center part).

Lecture was over by 11 a.m. and after short conversation with our chef we were dismissed. The payoff for me was a big-big homework for tomorrow. I did not quite understand all this jazz with student portal on-line and how it works, so on Saturday I left for SF with impression that we have first day in the kitchen on Tuesday and then we get homework. LOL

Things work differently here at the Culinary Institute of America. You suppose to come to class prepared. It's expected that when you come to class you have already read about topics for the class, you have reviewed all the terms for this class and also have done you written part of homework.
So from 1 p.m. till the late evening I was reading, writing and reading again. Now all is done and it's time to sleep.

Was again surprised with dinner today. I have no idea about the reason, but for dinner we had AMAZING buffet, indeed it was great! Smoked duck salad, stuffed quails with crayfish sauce, oysters and for dessert sabayon with frozen black currant (the choice of dessert was as usual big, this was my choice and I was stuffed to have two of them:-)

Tomorrow is our first practical class in the kitchen, looking forward to it!